


Multiverse Theory

by SoulJelly



Category: Code Lyoko
Genre: Code: Secret Santa 2019, M/M, Season 1, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21906505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulJelly/pseuds/SoulJelly
Summary: "Maybe we don't go back in time at all. Maybe we move to a different universe where none of it happened."Odd is sleep-drunk, mouth slack and eyes drifting closed. "Huh. Is that better or worse than going back in time?"That gives Ulrich pause. He isn't sure."There's no functional difference," says Jeremie, still looking at Ulrich. "But maybe it depends whether you prefer to undo mistakes or just start over. Whether you dream in possibilities."
Relationships: Jeremie Belpois & Odd Della Robbia & Ulrich Stern, Jeremie Belpois & Ulrich Stern, Jeremie Belpois/Ulrich Stern
Comments: 14
Kudos: 44





	Multiverse Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amorekay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorekay/gifts).



> (Surprise, it's me!) Happy holidays my dear, with so much love. ♥

This place is not home yet, but it will be.

In the months to come, this small room will wrap around them and warp gently to the shape of themselves. It's already begun: the stark white sheets once drawn tightly across the beds are now rumpled and slept in. Posters and tape have scuffed the walls. They're well into the first term and Odd is still living half out of suitcases, not to mention that he's in the middle of an art project that's spread across most of his bed. Ulrich is more disciplined but he's still got an unfinished chess game balanced on a stack of textbooks and a jacket heaped on the floor. In short, the dorm room of two teenage boys who are perfectly ordinary.

Well. Mostly.

They're piled on Ulrich's bed, him and Odd and the nerd from down the hallway, Jeremie Belpois. His new teammates, his allies in a war against a brutal A.I.

For all intents and purposes, his new friends.

"Yeah, team bonding!" yells Odd, close to Ulrich's ear, making him flinch. Ulrich catches Jeremie's eye and grimaces but Jeremie is all shrugs and undisguised amusement. "Come on, I've been wanting to watch this movie again ever since we took our first trip back in time. This is basically research now, right?"

"It's not really accurate to our understanding of time travel, Odd, but--"

"Yeah, yeah. The important thing is that it's a great movie. Weird scientists, the eighties, cars. What more do you want?"

Jeremie, who's already seen it a dozen times, makes a soft noise of agreement. Ulrich shrugs into a more comfortable position and folds his arms around one knee as the opening credits roll. They're sat widthways, Ulrich on the left, Jeremie in the middle and Odd on the right, Jeremie's laptop balanced on his knees.

"Anyway, Einstein," Odd is saying, (draping himself in a way that suggests to Ulrich that Odd's sense of personal space was probably removed at birth), "Maybe it's not so much about _accuracy_ as it is about getting some inspiration, huh? You think you could do some sciencey thing with the return to the past so we get to time travel in a cool car?" He gets this dreamy expression on his face and Ulrich can just _see_ the image forming in Odd's brain - Odd in a ridiculous orange bomber jacket, driving some vintage car backwards through time. Probably with a hot girl or guy in the passenger seat for good measure.

Ulrich scoffs but Jeremie is giving it serious thought.

"I suppose it's something to think about way in the future, if we're still fighting XANA by then. In theory it is possible to install some sort of database into a car and run the return to the past code from it, localising the initial energy burst from the supercomputer into a vehicle. Of course, we don't have licences and we're not old enough to drive, so it would have to wait--"

Odd is already off on another train of thought, reciting some trivia about the movie for Ulrich and Jeremie's benefit. Ulrich's eyes are trained on the subtitles.

"You all right?" Jeremie asks him.

"Just trying to watch," Ulrich replies with a twinge of irritation. Jeremie nods understanding, the movement causing strands of wispy blonde hair to catch on Ulrich's shoulder.

\--

"So what I'm saying is--" Odd stretches and loses himself to a wide yawn. "--That is, what I'm saying is, if _we're_ in a simulation then Lyoko is a simulation _within_ a simulation. Maybe you could make a virtual world inside Lyoko, Einstein? Then it could be a simulation within a simulation within a--"

They've gone from watching classic sci-fi movies to just talking nonsense and shooting out theories for hours, right up until past curfew, not moving from the bed. Odd is sprawled across both of their legs now looking up at them. Jeremie's head is resting comfortably against Ulrich's shoulder. Since the return to the past has upended physics as they know it, they've taken to wondering what else they don't know. Like maybe nothing is real, or there are more supercomputers out there, or--

"--Multiverses," says Ulrich. He feels both eyes turn to him. Jeremie twists to look at him properly and Ulrich feels a thrill of delight that he might have impressed him with some profound thought. "I mean," he elaborates, trying to wrap his tired brain around the words, "That maybe we don't go back in time at all. Maybe we move to a different universe where none of it happened."

Odd is sleep-drunk, mouth slack and eyes drifting closed. "Huh. Is that better or worse than going back in time?"

That gives Ulrich pause. He isn't sure.

"There's no functional difference," says Jeremie, still looking at Ulrich. "But maybe it depends whether you prefer to undo mistakes or just start over. Whether you dream in possibilities."

There is a long beat of silence.

And then, a long, loud droning sound.

They look down. There is Odd, head thrown back, hands curled beside his head, mouth open wide as he sleeps.

Jeremie raises an eyebrow.

"He snores."

"Yes," says Ulrich. "I've shared a room with him for weeks. I am aware."

"At least I know to buy you some earplugs for Christmas."

Jeremie grins and Ulrich can't tell if he's being teased or not.

He finds he doesn't really mind.

Odd flails in his sleep, flinging one arm wide and grabbing his wrist like he's shooting a laser arrow at the ceiling. It's too much for Jeremie, who clasps his hands over his mouth to stifle his laughter.

"You see what I have to put up with?" Ulrich asks, wryly.

"This is incredibly entertaining," Jeremie wheezes. "Come on, we shouldn't wake him." He looks at Odd's bed, still littered with canvases and paint and a sleeping Kiwi. "Don't bother moving all of that. You can sleep in my room tonight."

Jeremie is so matter of fact about things that Ulrich just follows him, both of them stifling laughter as they extract themselves from Odd's slumbering form (how is possible, asks Jeremie, for someone to be as loud asleep as they are awake?) and throwing a blanket over him before slipping into the darkened hallway and feeling their way to his room. Jeremie pushes open the door, rests a hand on Ulrich's back as he pushes him inside and automatically settles in his computer chair. Ulrich perches on the bed, pulling a blanket around himself. Jeremie flicks on the bedside lamp, leaving them mostly in shadow.

"I can't believe I'm going to have the best night's sleep I've had in weeks," says Ulrich and he's hardly meaning to be funny but Jeremie still laughs.

"Well, I don't know about that. If I can't sleep I'll get up and do some coding. Which hopefully won't wake you, but you never know."

"You're kind of crazy Belpois, but to each their own, I guess."

Jeremie's computer is still running. He spins in the chair and switches the monitor on briefly. Ulrich catches a glimpse of Aelita's sleeping face and Jeremie's fond smile before he switches it off again.

Ulrich nods to the screen.

"You think we'll ever bring her here?"

Jeremie thinks about it. "Maybe. She's just an A.I. after all. A very advanced one but ultimately..." he throws his arms wide in an emphatic shrug. "Who's to say? Anyway, she's asleep and you're here so you have my full attention. Unless you just want to go to bed, it is late after all."

"I'm good for a while. Like I say, I'm enjoying the peace."

"I know you think that you two won't get along, but Odd is actually pretty cool." Ulrich raises an eyebrow and Jeremie hastily corrects himself-- "Well, not _cool_ , not cool like you're cool, but you know--"

"You think I'm cool?"

Jeremie turns back to his computer again and makes a show of untangling the cable attached to his mouse. When he spins back to face Ulrich his face is still slightly pink.

"In the sporty, popular guy kind of way, yes."

"And here I thought you were starting to get to know me, Bel- Jeremie."

"Since we're saving the world together on a regular basis now, I'm sure I will."

Ulrich ponders that for a moment. They've fought a giant teddy bear and averted a nuclear crisis and he still can't quite believe that no one is talking about it. He'll pick up the newspapers and skim through, looking for articles and signs that anyone, anyone at all remembers, but it's exactly like Jeremie said - the return to the past makes it so that things never happened. Their fellow students talk about homework and sports and all the usual things without a second thought. He's never felt more excited or more afraid in his life. He spends a lot of time watching, waiting to see what XANA will do next, body itching to go back to Lyoko and hold a sword and fight.

"Thinking about XANA, huh?"

Ulrich looks up, startled. "How did you--?"

Jeremie looks at Ulrich down his glasses. "Like any of us have thought about anything else since this whole thing started."

"Right. It's super surreal."

"You don't need to tell me twice."

They smile at each other.

"Thank you," blurts Ulrich. He winds his hands in the blanket, suddenly embarrassed but needing to say it. "Thank you for trusting me."

"You saved my life from those robots. I would have been a fool not to."

"I know, but-- still."

Jeremie has been cheerful up to now, reassured and calm, but a shadow passes over his face. "Don't thank me yet," he says. "We still don't really know what we're getting into."

"That's something I've been meaning to ask you about, actually." Ulrich looks up. "How do we know that it's safe?"

"We don't, not yet. There's still so much I'm working out about the supercomputer, I'm discovering new things every day. We just have to trust each other. Do you trust me, Ulrich?" And it's a valid question, proposed quite solemnly, Jeremie's gaze flickering over Ulrich's face as though he might find the answer scattered in his furrowed brow, the slant of Ulrich's mouth.

"You seem to know what you're doing," Ulrich says after a long moment. "And that's good enough for me."

Jeremie's shoulders slump, releasing tension Ulrich hadn't even noticed he was holding.

Another silence. Jeremie understands the need for a good, contemplative silence in a way that Odd has probably never done in his life, and it's something about him that Ulrich can appreciate. It's nice to just sit here, look around Jeremie's room with all his neatly folded clothes and stacked books and be comfortable in someone else's space.

"Do you believe it?" asks Jeremie at last.

"What?"

"The multiverse thing."

"Eh, I don't know. I was just saying it. You'd know better than me."

"In the supercomputer, the programme is called 'return to the past' but that doesn't mean it actually does what its creator intended."

"So we're working with some mad scientist technology that's beyond even its creator's comprehension, great."

"I didn't say that! It's just... a theory. Like your multiverse thing."

"Well, I don't know anything about any of this stuff. You're the smart one."

Jeremie's lip quirks in a way that makes Ulrich thinks he's about to make another stupid joke. Just how much time _have_ he and Odd been spending together, anyway? Ulrich can only hope the rubbing-off works both ways.

"Like you're the cool one," is Jeremie's reply and there it is, there's the stupid joke: "And Odd is the--"

"Odd one," they say in unison, laughing until they remember where they are and the lateness of the hour and have to press their sleeves to their mouths until they're calm again. Ulrich exhales like he's run a mile, breathless but light as a balloon. He never laughed this much just a few weeks ago. He realises he's still smiling.

Jeremie sits backwards on his chair, tips of his toes just brushing the floor and his arms and chin propped on the headrest. He's giving Ulrich this thoughtful, serious look.

"It's fascinating," he says, and it takes Ulrich a moment to realise he's picking up a previous train of thought. "There's a book you should read, I'm sure I brought it with me, I'll lend it to you. If it's true, there's an alternate universe for everything. A universe where some other student discovered the supercomputer. Where XANA is a force for good instead of evil. Where Aelita is a real, human girl. And yet if the supercomputer _is_ taking us from universe to universe, it always knows to drop us in one exactly like the one we just left. Like it knows that we're meant to be, in some way, exactly where we are."

"So you think it's more likely to be time travel? I'll be honest, Jeremie, I don't really follow a lot of this science stuff."

"Like I said before, the effect is functionally the same. For us, anyway. So pick whichever theory you like best."

"In that case..." Ulrich splays out on the bed, tucking the blanket more tightly around himself. "...I'll go with the multiverse theory."

"Yeah?"

Ulrich nods. "You can come over here, by the way. It's your bed." He doesn't quite know why saying that makes his heart beat a little faster, but he feels gratitude when Jeremie comes to settle next to him on the bed. They adjust the blankets over themselves and lie shoulder to shoulder in the dark, staring up at the darkened ceiling.

"I like the idea that there's lots of possibilities," says Ulrich finally, when he feels like his heart might be beating a little less painfully in his chest. "I like thinking about all the decisions out there that lead us to different things. All the what-ifs."

Jeremie shuffles beside him, hands folded carefully over his stomach. There's a little catch in his voice when he speaks next and says, "They don't all have to be what-ifs. Not if you don't want them to be."

"And I guess," replies Ulrich, gathering every scrap of his courage and turning his head just in time to see the outline of Jeremie's profile tilt towards him. Another half inch and the tips of their noses will be touching. Anxiety forms cold waves in his stomach and he stumbles blindly through it. He's a warrior now and that doesn't come without courage.

"You guess?"

Jeremie's voice is so, so soft. Ulrich doesn't realise he forgot to finish his sentence.

"I guess whatever what-ifs we-- we-- choose for ourselves, or whatever. I guess no matter what we do, we'll still come right back to exactly where we're meant to be? Exactly where we are."

Jeremie chuckles, warm and nasally, a now-familiar sound. "I think you're smarter than you give yourself credit for, Stern."

Ulrich shakes his head. "If you're gonna say that, you've gotta agree that you're cooler than you give _yourself_ credit for." Their shoulders shake again. Ulrich hasn't smiled this much in his entire life. "You're distracting me!" he says finally.

"From what?"

And before Ulrich can talk himself out of it he simply says, "From this--" and closes the distance between their lips.


End file.
